Post 3
AS PROMISED, I’LL ADDRESS the MeToo movement, but first let me talk about Omarosa. I read Unhinged. It’s a burn-down-the-house book, just as she was a 29-year-old, burn-down-the-house contestant on the first season of The Apprentice.
Reality shows are patterned after the WWE and fifteen years ago it took a bit of lunacy to believe The Apprentice had applications for real-life business. Someone has to be the bad guy on reality TV. Omarosa anointed herself. Other contestants recommended her firing time after time, but Trump kept her for two-thirds of the season and brought her back in 2008 for the first season of Celebrity Apprentice where she became embroiled in a feud with Piers Morgan. Trump fired her, and then he brought her to the White House to fire her a third time.
She revealed in Unhinged that Trump may have been caught on tape using the N-word. I was covering the show more thoroughly than any reporter in 2004 and I never heard of such a tape. Omarosa got a lot of media attention stoking the Trump-is-racist flames, though she wrote on the same pages that she was always his favorite contestant. That’s a head-scratcher and I’ve yet seen any media report that addresses the contradiction.
Is Trump racist? Kwame Jackson, who finished second that first season, was asked by Variety. He said that he didn’t want to add “fuel and attention to the tomfoolery.”
Bill Rancic defeated Jackson in the finals and went on to star in America Now with Leeza Gibbons. More recently he’s hosted Kitchen Casino, has been a spokesman for Rogaine, and wrote the novel First Light, set in the same Yukon wilds as my new historical novel The Cremation of Sam McGee, which takes a swipe at 1898 yellow journalism.
Rancic and Jackson have been successful since The Apprentice. But it’s Omarosa we’ll remember, just as Donald Trump will go down as our most memorable president.
I can’t say greatest or worst president because who knows what he’ll do or say today, or tomorrow. So far, what he says is mostly obnoxious, which is why I didn’t vote for him.
Scott Adams, creator of the Dilbert cartoon, says Trump may wind up winning two Nobel Peace Prizes, one for North Korea and one for a Middle East solution.
Maybe he’ll get himself impeached as a side hustle, but If Trump can strip North Korea of nukes and solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict I’ll vote for him in 2020 no matter how many tweets he feeds into his Hulk Hogan presidency.
I’LL TAKE A BREATH HERE and summarize The Apprentice’s first dumb challenge. The contestants were divided into teams of gender––eight women vs. eight men. They were to sell as much lemonade as possible. Big surprise, the women out-sold the men by 300 percent. The male team looked creepy selling lemonade in shirts and ties, while the women passed for adorable when they weren’t sniping at each other. One customer said that the lemonade was worth $1, but a kiss from the attractive saleswoman was worth another $4.
Women use sex appeal to sell. “Always have and always will,” Trump said to me in our Thursday conversation, but he agreed that the sight of twentysomethings hugging and kissing Rogaine-starved customers on the Manhattan streets was a little bit out there. If Trump says it’s “out there,” who can argue?
“But it worked,” Trump said. “The only way the men could have won was to hire women to sell in their place.” The teams could not have been more unequal if Trump had made them play football.
I’VE DECIDED TO ADDRESS the MeToo controversy from the unique perspective of the youth athletic field.
Huh?
I’ve attended 99 percent of my son’s and daughter’s sporting events from T-ball through Division I collegiate ball. Before my oldest graduated high school, about the time the first season of The Apprentice ended, I took up sports officiating. I’ve called thousands of softball, field hockey and basketball games that range from little boys and girls to Division I. I’m off to umpire a 10-and-under softball double-header the minute I finish this post.
I’ve observed many coaches and every coaching style. Two weekends ago, I saw a 12-year-old softball shortstop fumble a ground ball only to be demeaned by a male voice from the dugout. The criticism was loud and went on and on. It was an inappropriate display that should have been met with the intervention of an adult.
With some frequency I see coaches, almost exclusively male coaches, verbally belittle young girls––while the parents of those girls sit quiet and do nothing.
Umpires are trained not to intervene. It’s dumb, but we can eject coaches who abuse us, but we can’t defend fifth-graders. I think such policies should be reconsidered for officials. We should be allowed to issue warnings when parents sit there and let their children take it.
Teams that have jerk coaches almost always win. I know this from years of anecdotal observation. I find myself secretly hoping that such behavior will be penalized by the scoreboard. It isn’t. Why? Not because critical loud mouths make better coaches, but because they have assembled a superior team. Their own daughter is good pitcher, or they have somehow recruited one. Other quality position players join travel teams with the great pitchers. Children “play through” the coaching torment in the name of success and winning games and winning college scholarships.
This abuse isn’t sexual. So what does it have to do with MeToo? Well, consider the would-be actresses, and interns, and pretty young women who want to be in front of cameras, or otherwise starving for success. Think about the repulsive Harvey Weinsteins and Roy Moores with the power imbalance to take advantage. Think about what we adults teach girls AND boys when we sit silent, rather than move our sons and daughters to a healthy environment with a sane coach, albeit one with losses on their record.
MeToo applies to our sons, too. I interviewed Larry Brown, NBA and Olympic basketball coach. He said that he joined the advisory board of the Positive Coaching Alliance after his 8-year-old boy was screamed at by a youth baseball manager. No one thrives on intimidation or shame, Brown says. No player or employee, no girl or boy.
And what of the pretty Apprentice women who hugged and kissed older men for a $4 tip? I don’t believe they’re guiltless just because their actions are not on the same Outrage Planet as the casting couch. Unprofessional behavior from women reinforces the Weinsteins and their “gratuities” for good service.
I believe that sexual abuse occurs anytime someone is exposed to sex when they don’t yet have the wisdom or power to deny it. That means that any 14-year-boy or girl who introduces Internet porn to a 12-year-old boy or girl is being abusive. Under this definition, says apolitical podcaster Brant Hansen, culture itself is abusive.
That’s what I’m thinking about fifteen years after my Thursdays with Trump. Forgive my mansplaining, but that’s what I’m thinking about today.
(Read NBA and Olympic coach Larry Brown’s thoughts on positive coaching’s place in the workplace in the Del Leonard Jones’ book: Advice From the Top: 1001 Bits of Business Wisdom.)